Ayn Rand's The Showerhead

The year is 1949 – King Vidor’s ground-breaking adaptation of Ayn Rand’s philosonovella The Fountainhead has just, predictably enough, broken new ground. Audiences around the States, and other places, are in raptures over Gary Cooper’s moving depiction of a man who stood his ground – a feat only an actor as awful as Cooper could perform and still get paid for.  Audiences are clamouring for more! More stories about integrity, more pictures about daring new ideas, more about Randian supermen like Howard Roark and Dominique Francon – and when the public clamours, The Warner Bros. go a’clam-digging.

Work starts immediately on a sequel. However the short notice, the tall orders, tight deadlines, loose salaries, and the tendency of the actors to fall asleep before finishing the 2^nd page of the script (carefully handcrafted by Rand herself (and interns)) have resulted in a general stalling process known in Objectivist terms as “Rand Licensing” but colloquially coloured by the Best Boy as “Atlas F----d!”

The Warner Bros. executives, keeping their finger on the pulse of this particular dead horse, feel they need some extraneous talent, a gimmick to give some horsepower to the deceased equine. Scouring their little black books, and their budget, they finally seek out recourse in a different set of Bros…

Meanwhile, in the opposite corner of Hollywood, down at United Artists studios- a very  narrow corner-in fact, a broom closet – three men of respectable age and scatological demeanor are slapping each other over a card table and a bottle of gin. Washed-up, but certainly not washed, the three erstwhile Marx Bros, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, are in a tizzy over gambling debts, the crankiness of age, and poor dividends from their last picture Love Happy (what small success it incidentally did incur was hardly attributable to the brothers and must be accorded to the new bombshell Marx Girl, one Marilyn Monroe - née BADUMBABUM).

Irving Thalberg, adoptive father of the Brothers since they were left on MGM’s doorsteps one cold night by the deadbeat dads at Paramount, storms into the room with a phone clutched in one knuckle-white paw.

Thalberg: Will you bums keep quiet for a second!?

Groucho: We’re not bums, Thalberg, we’re just big-boned.

Chico: Speak-a  for yourself, the only big-bones I see fo’ the last five years are the ones I been stealin’ from the stray dogs ‘round the corner.

Groucho: A BONE-afied criminal, eh?

Harpo: *HONK*

Thalberg: JUST SHUT UP WOUDYA!? I think I might actually have some work for you boneheads, so-

All three: WORK!? (*honk*!?)

The brothers simultaneously tackle Thalberg…

***

Although the film itself was never completed, one scene at least survived the purging process, much to the satisfaction of Non-Objectivists everywhere. This reel is kept behind lock, Rottweiler, and keylime, but this lucky reviewer was given a special screening one night after the requisite pass at three glasses of Pernod and unspeakable favours to the cleaning staff.

The following summary describes, more or less, what I remember of the film:

Ayn Rand’s The Showerhead

Scene: Architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) and Sultry Seductress Dominque Francon-Teasdale  (the delicious Patricia Neal being, alas, pinched for another project, the role was taken up by the ever unpinchable Margaret Dumont).

Both are standing before the doors of wealthy business ownentrepenaire Julius K. Grasshopper.

Roark (Cooper): Ms. Francon, I hope you know I can’t accept any terms on this building but my very own.

Francon-Teasdale (Dumont): Oh Howard! You are ever so stubborn. Ever!

Roark: Be that as it may, I have to stick by what I believe is good and true. A man who can’t do what he himself feels is true is nothing but a shell, Ms. Francon, an empty shell, a pandering tool of other men to use in whatever way they see fit.

Francon-Teasdale: I am sure I quite understand.

Roark: I suppose my bold, unblinking force of will is making you faint?

Francon-Teasdale: That, and this Sidecar, Mr. Roark. But I am ever so worried, oh..

Roark: A true man never worries. A true man is only –

Francon-Teasdale: But Roark! Dear, uncompromising Roark! How will you ever convince him?

Roark: Whom? Him? What? I pay him no mind. I haven’t even thought once about him and his sponsorship and the millions upon millions he could invest in my building. No mind at all.

Francon-Teasdale: But Howard! Mr. Grasshopper is as willful a man as yourself – stubborn, uncompromising, completely tied to his own high-minded ideals. You can at least respect that?

Roark: Respect it, maybe, but I won’t capitulate.

Francon-Teasdale: Really Mr. Roark, must you curse?

They enter the room.

 It is a large, Art-Deco style executive office about 40 feet long and 20 feet wide. A mammoth desk, made out of real Mammoth, engulfs 3/4ths of the room. At the other end, we see the back of an expensive swivel chair, made out of real swivel. Puffs of cigar smoke indicate the chair is occupied.

Francon-Teasdale: Mr. Grasshopper, I present the architect Howard Roark. He’s the genius behind the scandalous Bollocks-Pimsdale building, and the new Oedipal Living Complex. I beg you, I implore you, use him! If you would do anything for me, if you still love me, use him!

Roark: Listen Mr. Grasshopper, I don’t intend to bend over backwards for you. If you want to use my plans for this new building I am more than happy to agree – I congratulate you for your excellent taste. But don’t think you can change anything – I mean any one thing. A man like me lives for his work, Grasshopper, his life’s work is all that matters, and not money, not fame, not the applause of the disgusting rabble can ever change that, and least of all you. Surely a man of your strength and power of will can accept that?

Grasshopper: … *cigar puffs from behind the chair*

Roark: Surely you can respect where I am coming from?

Grosshopper: … *more puffs*

Roark: Now listen here, surely you can make me an offer? I’ll refuse it of course, if it is the slightest bit compromising, but surely…

Francon-Teasdale: Mr. Grasshopper, please! I beg you, I --

She walks over to the chair and turns it around, revealing Groucho asleep, in nothing but his underwear, with a half eaten piece of plain toast on his lap, as well as a chimpanzee, who is wearing his glasses and smoking his cigar.

Francon-Teasdale: MY WORD!

Grasshopper, waking up suddenly: Wha!? No! It’s my word, I saw it first! Buy! Sell! What!

Francon-Teasdale: Mr. Grasshopper!

Grasshopper, taking his glasses and cigar back and addressing the chimp: Thanks for covering for me. You’ll be promoted for this. Expect a big pay raise – I’m not talking bananas here.

The chimp sticks out his tongue.

Grasshopper: Alright, bananas!

The chimp hobbles out.

Grasshopper: He’s the best man I’ve got . But what did you want? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tonight if you’re here to clean-up, comprendez? Tonight? And watch out for that john, it’s NO HABLA in there, got it? And have you any black-strap molasses? I said molasses you filthy swine - get your head out of the gutter and into my lap!

Francon-Teasdale: You misunderstand, Mr. Grasshopper. This is the architect Howard Roark!

Grasshopper: Oh an architect! An architect! Fancy that, bringing an architect into my office like that, an architect! And at this time of day! (It is day, isn’t it?) I mean, of all the nerve, here, now, an architect!

*Pause*

What’s an architect?

Francon-Teasdale: He’s going to design your new building, if you let him.

Roark: And you better, sir, not get any funny ideas of changing my plans around, or you can count me out.

Grasshopper: I assure you, Mr. Roark, I cannot count that high. But come, you think you’re the only architect in town? Why I have architects battering down my door just so they can design a new one.

Roark: I can’t speak for them, I can only claim that none of them have my vision or integrity.

Grasshopper: Well, we’ll see about that. *Picking up the phone * Bubbles, would you see the OTHER architect in please?

The chimp enters leading Chico(Bologna Genoa) and Harpo (Keter Peating) into the room. Harpo immediately chases down Francon-Teasdale while Chico dives through his legs to reach Grasshopper and shake his hand.

Chico: How you do? Wait, don’t tell me – I gotta sixth sense for these things – you do well, you rich! You gonna be a big success! Just keep you nose to the grindstone - I got big plans for you boss. Can I borrow a five?

Grasshopper: You must be the architect.

Chico: No, he’s the architect.

Points to Harpo who is chasing Francon-Teasdale around the room.

Chico: I’ma his agent.

Grasshopper: You see that Roark, he’s got an agent? That’s an architect!

Chico: A, that ain’t nuthin. You should see what else he got!

Harpo: *HONK* Reveals a deep sea diving helmet, a hamster, and what looks to be a life-size building model from under his coat.

Grasshopper: Well, now we’ve got a show here. Ok, Roark, how about instead of all this Algonquin Roundtable flim-flam about vision, we do this the old fashioned way. A novel idea! Let’s see who’s got the nicest model building.

Roark: Tough but fair.

Grasshopper: On the count of three, reveal – one, two…

Chico: Wait! It’s no fair! He gotta the hometown advantage. We need to do this fairum squarum.

Chico switches the models around.

Roark: Hey, what is this!

Roark switches them back. Chico switches one and throws the other to Harpo. Grasshopper starts narrating a play by play of the football match. Finally, Roark gets a hold of his model, still covered, and they prepare to reveal.

Grasshopper: Alright, let’s get this road on the show. One, two, three!

The big reveal – both models are exactly the same.

Roark: But! But that’s impossible! He stole my idea!

Harpo looks angry and honks aggressively, getting into his boxing posture.

Chico: Well boss, that’s not true, they not exactly the same.

Grasshopper: No? What’s different?

Chico: Look in apartment 405.

Grasshopper peers in and snaps back, shocked.

Grasshopper: Yowza! Is she a permanent resident?

Chico: Sure, and her husband he’s an ambassador to Chile.

Grasshopper: Well, she could stand some warming up then. Ladies and gentleman, upon deep aesthetic reflection, I think I’ll take this one – the assets are certainly sure to be in order.

Chico: Deal!

They shake hands, Roark storms out, Francon-Teasdale faints, and Harpo starts to play Yankee Doodle on a fife as the screen fades out to a shot of the waving American Flag.

Summer of the Jackal

Sweetness Gyorgichscka,

First, business: How are my goats growing? Send me a goat sandwich immediately; I am impatient to know how they are doing.

(Damn this new Facebook timeline!!! I cannot see their pictures as once I could, and love them.)

But my sweetness - Canada! What a country! Ottawa! What a city!

Here the streets are wind with bounty: all the delicious golden dogs you can cram into carpet bag! And the rivers, my little garlic, the rivers (and so many of them!) are bursting with ducks, geese, and tasty swimming hog they call a “musk-rat”. I enclose a sample of its bacon for your teeth to try it.

I have no more resignations. I urge you to drop all of your tools, your mud-rakes and your snake pincers – drop them at once! Kiss dear Uncle Gologrish on the cheek, pat once more the balding skull of Urpa Gagorsh, the Lucky Dullard, and buy with earth tubers the next train ticket to this magnificent place.

One thing, nonetheless, I must advise you if ever you decide to forsake the leech-fields of our cruel ancestors. The people here are not disgusting and, like we, rhino of skin – here they feel the weather, my toenail, they feel it like we feel the tears of jackal. They always talk of it! It is etiquette.

I will give you a for example: I was in the middle of driving my caravan towards the market vegetable prison, to get a nice onion for my sandwich (the onions here are so big! I could not count how big it was!)  – I am accompanied by a Canadian man in a suit who asks me for “carpool”. What to say to him?

I search my national history for a topic – I try many times. I find the 30 campaigns of Ingra Garganook-Ganur are hardly correct for a man with a Mickey Mouse tie. We are on the brink of utter silence. Grasping, I think carefully. I sweat.

“Hot!” I say finally. (This is the Canadian word for “hot”).

Ah! How he smiled! How he woke up from the torpor of the afternoon slug-ghosts – he was then the one to look me in the eye, to touch my kneecap. He smiled smilingly and said to my face:

“It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity!”

Geeschka, How much trouble this one phrase has saved me! I can attribute to it on many times the preservation of my seven souls.

It was not one day later, I am in line at the store for a “Teeh’mortons” (Canadian word for unbaptized vampire bread). Unfortunately I hit a man in front of me with my fresh hockey stick – oh he was angry! I have never heard so many “buddy!” in my life, which is the Canadian scream for “asckhragor!”

What do to? He is going to hit – I close my eyes, pray to jackal, and whimper out:

“Hot! But you know, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!”

All of a sudden he is all grinning fox. The man, he is I am suspect in love with me! We buy the boiling black broth together, and we roll-up each others’s rims. Salvation.

Or take further note: I am at the Canadian bank, a place where the cleverest of men can steal pens. One must converse with the pen-farmers first, however, and distract them.

“Hello sir” she says to me (I eye the pens) “how are you doing” (slow reach) “today?”

Here I nod and smile, and give the broad wink.

“Well,” (reach further) “it’s not the heat. It’s the humidity!”

“I KNOWWW!” she screams, at which point I empty the pens into my sack with the golden dogs and bacon and take-off for homewards, a-cackling.

Learn this sentences, my mossrock, practice them every day on the trip to the well and back. Sing them to yourself in the form of the witch ballads, weave them into the folk scarves, carve them onto the wishing sticks that you cast with fury at the cats of Baba Yaga.

It’s not the heat

Or agralala ichikamee!

It’s the humidity

Oh yes, by jackal

It’s the humidity

Or agralala ichikamee!

Once you have learned them, come. And bring goats – call them our children for passport.

I crunch your paws,

-Bozaqo Ape-Son Impotence Number the Seventh.

Plain Cornflakes, or, The Vagaries of Cereal Dating

“To a patio, yes! To a patio!

To a patio must we go!

To a patio, with a pitcher!

I declare it must be so.”

We agree to meet in the afternoon

On a patio for a beer.

A guy who couldn’t agree to that

(She felt) was kinda queer.

We agree to meet anywhere downtown

So long as it had a patio.

A guy who couldn’t agree to that

(She felt) was lacking Ratio.

She loves quinoa (and don’t you know!)

She loves to do photography.

Her ideal man (or chick) must boast:

Tattoos and good orthography.

Oh a lovely, lovely patio

Dear sir, (I heard her sigh)

A beer and a patio right ‘bout now

Oh sir, and I could die!

She’s “fun-loving” and “down to earth”

And “totally easy going”.

(I don’t know what she meant and I

Felt awkward for not knowing.)

Supposedly she “loves to read”

When she “has the time, but any-waaay...”

She’s read at least one book, I’m sure,

One book by Ernest Hemingway.

“Ah, patty, oh patty, how pretty-o!

Underneath an umbrella and drinking

A lovely old beer on St. Patty-o’s

What else could a woman be thinking?”

She loves to visit far-off lands

And she loves to get outdoors.

She loves so many lovely things -

But a patio! Nothing more!

Ah girls, I know you’re interesting…

Pardon my non-complacency.

I`m glad you all have likes but must

You be so damn Renaissancy?

Ah girls I know you love things

So much as loving’s able

So won’t you settle for a cup of wine

And a notched-up picnic table?

Oh men of the world who would date

And would catch you a fish on the line

Just hook on a “patio” as bait

And you’ll do (as I see it) just fine.

Writing for the Web, or, a Boxer's Rebellion against the Brief

“And here we shall of necessity be led to open a new vein of knowledge, which if it hath been discovered, hath not, to our remembrance, been wrought on by any antient or modern writer. This vein is no other than that of contrast, which runs through all the works of the creation, and may probably have a large share in constituting in us the idea of all beauty, as well natural as artificial: for what demonstrates the beauty and excellence of anything but its reverse? Thus the beauty of day, and that of summer, is set off by the horrors of night and winter. And, I believe, if it was possible for a man to have seen only the two former, he would have a very imperfect idea of their beauty.”

-Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

The current public obsession with PowerPointilism and Web-Writing has led to some interesting commandments from the latest authority of orthodox textual criticism.

The gurus, a race of Asiatic mystics responsible for those wordy juggernauts, the Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharats, Purana etc. have in the last few decades turned their attention to “online writing”. In this mode they have taken a turn for the terse. These “web gurus” have broken with past sects of Vedantic verbosity and today suggest that online writing (somewhat presumptuously referred to as “content”, but which in two cases out of three deserves the prefix “mal-”, and in the final third “un-“)must be:

• Brief
• Simple
• To the point
• Use Bullets
• Avoid complete sentences etc.

Yet, as is usual in all fields of criticism, the “why” is so much easier to spell than the “wherefore”.  The exact reason WHY impious web writers are to swear themselves to this Trappist oath of silencio can be found nowhere explicitly stated in Saints Augustine, Origen, Paul, or even the Book of Jobs. Some generalities about the distemper caused by computer screens are hardly sufficient in a world where so many will stare for so long and with perfect concentration at pixilated Geschlechtsverkehr (for those who don’t speak German, this word is as dirty as it sounds).

“But! But! The research shows…” Does it? By what Mephistophelean agency has research been given the power to speak for itself? It may very well be your interpretation that “most people who read web content scan for key words, they don’t read for whole sentences.” The fact is, my charming academe, you have merely stumbled upon the tip of what critics of the race have long since known: most people are piss-poor readers in general. And if you think they only scan writing for key-words, you have only to look at the way your standard Carleton student reads expressions, gestures, and situations involving the opposite sex. “Scanning for key words” is giving the poor brute too much credit.

The history of brief writing is as old as the book itself. Callimachus first expressed the notion in his slogan “big book = big trouble!” His disciples have been legion, from the pseudo-mathematicism of Spinoza to the “piths and gists” of the modernist movement, and finally, the clinical malice of Strunk and White’s “omit needless words”.

In short, no matter when, this school has always demanded texts be:

• Brief
• Simple
• To the point
• Use Bullets
• Avoid complete sentences etc.

There is nothing new in the so-called “web writing” of today’s gurus and sannyasins.  The modern web-guru who thinks he is preaching a new doctrine can read the aphorisms of Vauvenargues as if they came from the latest blog "in the industry": “La clarté orne les pensées profondes. L'obscurité est le royaume de l'erreur.” And for the good.

This tendency in literature has always been an excellent companion to the more baroque and florid school of the Homericans, Rablesians etc. of which the present Blogger humbly appends his own person. Nevertheless, I believe the pendulum is swinging, as can only be expected, to the opposing zone of influence.

Printed text is so 1939-1945. We live in a world of CTRL+F and unlimited mouse-scrolling fuel in the form of caffeinated potables. We’ve got computer chairs with wheels, children! Put some on your brains too. Every Joyce has his Becket, and, since the world of Internet writing has been bombarded by the brevity-boobs ad nauseam, I propose that we few , we happy few perambulatory sentenceers once more take the helm of the Ship of State, and leave our short-mouthed companion some time for a spit, sleep and a smoke.

My ultimate hypotheses here:

One) Online writing is much closer to what we call “thinking” than “doing” – at least much more than static print based writing. The attendant pleasures of “thinking” – editing, repetition, alternation, sublimation (and other pseudo-Hegelian usages) can and should come to the foreground. Why shouldn’t we spin out full – no, beyond full, overfull, chock-full sentences?

B) Like the printing press, which first compelled a network of carts to deliver Bibles and pornography across Europe, and only afterwards Enlightenment, the Web fundamentally ought to exist for the purposes of literary expression. This is clearly a bias on my part, perhaps malicious, but a conceit which I will happily stand-by. I am pleased to define the web-writer himself as part of that atavistic class in which Kenneth Rexroth once placed Tacitus, “a clerkly individual who has discovered that his kind is no longer useful and who therefore has lost hope in the future, faith in natural process, and charity toward his fellows.”

iii) The “Homerican Scholar” is in need of a declaration of independence, self-evident and uncompromisingly patriotic, in which all citizens of the Rhodomontade Republic will feel themselves represented (for they are taxed enough!) in this new space of literary expression.